Navigating Messy Conversations
I’m by no means an expert on this topic, but it’s an area I continue to work on (much like the rest of my posts). I find myself in spaces needing to navigate through messy conversations fairly often (at work with students, personally, with peers, etc). A lot of us grew up in an environment that totally avoided conflict at all costs or taught us fairly unhealthy ways of dealing with it (lashing out, yelling, dumping our issues on other people, etc). This is nobody’s fault, but I think we could all use more development in navigating tough things. I feel like I’ve learned through so much trial and error about what works and what doesn’t work. Here’s what I’ve learned over time.
In the midst of conflict, it is totally normal that we blame, we get defensive, we try to run away and hide, we numb out, we get reactive and we armor up. When we are so convinced we are right, the worst parts of our humanity often kick into high gear and we have all sorts of reactions. Let’s normalize the fact that we are going to have some sort of first reaction to conflict. Regardless of what your personal style is, it’s okay. We need to normalize it, talk about it, and then continue to move through it. The worst thing we can do is get stuck in our very first reaction. When we are only operating from that very first reaction, we are probably missing a lot of other information that may be important.
Once we can learn to sit with and then move through that first reaction, I think getting clear about what your own perspective is can be helpful. Your perspective is more expansive than just your feelings about the situation. Typically in conflict, feelings are the things that come up first. We feel sadness, we feel anger, we feel rage, etc. We can typically identify those things. What doesn’t always come up is the deeper meaning and issue under the surface. There is usually something under those feelings that we need to sit with to understand our own stuff. If you walk into a conflict purely fueling up on your emotions, it is probably not going to get you very far. As you are sitting with your own narrative around what happened and as you start to get clear with yourself, I think this begins the time when we need to get curious. We can now move into the space where we are comfortable with our own narrative. Now let’s check-in: are we in a place where we can even begin to wrap our mind around the fact that there might be another version of facts or feelings out there? Can we even begin to conceptualize the idea that the other person might feel differently? If you can begin to imagine that, I’d say you are ready to proceed. If you’re not, your work starts right here. Don’t go any further. You need to sit with the idea that there might be more information and more to the story. Until you are able to hold space for that possibility, you are not ready to dialogue with the other person in the conflict. Beyond the other perspective, I’d also invite you to think about the third perspective. Typically, in a conflict, there are two stories (held by each party), and probably a third version of facts that might be closer to the actual truth. We need to hold space for the fact that we might not have the whole story.
If we can sit with that, we’re probably ready to have a conversation. If both people can come to the conflict clear about their own stuff, their own perspectives, their own feelings, and their own needs, more than likely, the conversation can be productive. If they can’t do that, more than likely the time will be spent ruminating and arguing in the feeling space without much progress forward.
One of the hardest things I’ve had to sit with in my life is the fact that my truth is not THE truth. It is not everyone’s truth. I am not always “right.” What helps me sleep at night is coming to the realization that (at least in my belief system), there is really not one truth about much in life. People have perspectives, feelings, beliefs and thoughts about many things. They are all valid and can be in the conversation (even if we don’t agree). We can’t just skip over other people’s thoughts, feelings and beliefs and bulldoze them. That doesn’t get us anywhere.
As I mature and grow, I’ve learned to come to peace and accept the fact that some people are just going to believe the things they believe and it’s not my job to try to change them. It is hard work, it really is, to allow for this type of ambiguity in life. It is hard to be in relationships where we don’t see eye to eye, and yet, I think this is the beauty of being human. We aren’t all the same. We see things differently, we have our own beliefs, etc. If we can be in relationships where we can hold space for all of it, the beauty in the breadth and depth of experiences, we are offered the opportunity to grow and to see things from another vantage point. It’s a gift when we lean into it.
